"Intel has released the long awaited x86 system image of Ice Cream Sandwich for the Android SDK and emulator. This will allow the Android emulator (long plagued with slow and buggy performance) to run at native speed on computers using the Intel x86 architecture."

Check your configuration. You need kvm installed (obviously) and need to be part of the KVM group so that you can use KVM using a normal account.

On my laptop (with SSD) it took less than 3 minutes for my WVGA800 AVD to boot the first time. All subsequent boots into the existing AVD have been in under 10 seconds.

By careful of advice telling you to activate GPU acceleration. In Windows it is a safe bet but in Linux it will depend on a case by case basis with version of Linux and type of GPU. I would suggest getting it working without GPU acceleration and then adding it afterwards.

I would also note my tablet AVD locked up on initial load. I let it run a few minutes then closed it (it was stuck on the chrome android). When I started it up a second time though it loaded very quickly.

EDIT: Also note If you are trying to run the emulator inside a VM that will not work. KVM won't have access to the extensions. If you are trying to run the emulator on the base iron but have Virtualbox active this also will not work. Generally you can not have 2 hypervisors connected to the VT extensions at the same time. Virtualbox won't load while the KVM modules are loaded and vice versa.